Identity Formation Of Young People Research Articles

The limits of public policy - affecting change in identity formation in young people

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Listening to young people’s voices: Attempts at developing context- and participant-sensitive approaches

This article explores the methodological impact of sharpening researchers’ listening skills as part of the development of more context- and participant-sensitive approaches to research. The starting point is an analysis of structured app interviews with young people at a multicultural festival. Through the research process, we became increasingly aware of forms of communication we were prone to overlook, such as the here-and-now engagement of the participants, their carnivalesque expressions and associative and fragmented narration. Listening more openly required a reflexive extension of the data analysis and gave us unexpected glimpses into the life world and identity formation of young people.

Social and religious dimensions of mixed-faith families: The case of a Muslim–Christian family

The article reports data from a study investigating the religious identity formation of young people in mixed-faith families. This involved parents from Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim backgrounds, with a spouse of these four faiths. One of the ‘Muslim–non-Muslim’ families is considered here as a case study to shed light on social and religious dimensions pertaining to both parents and children. One parent has a Muslim, the other a Christian background. The article examines how the parents understand and approach the ‘mixed’ nature of their family and how this translates into socialising their children into their respective religious traditions. It also engages with the perceptions of the children, exploring their sense of religious identity and social belonging. Drawing on interviews, the article discusses participants’ perspectives regarding ‘dual heritage’/‘mixedness’ and cultural and religious transmission, referring to studies on mixed-faith families to embed the data in existing research.

Специфика функционирования механизма формирования идентичности современной молодежи в условиях изменяющейся социальной реальности

This article offers a look at the process of identity formation of representatives of generations Z (Homelanders) in a modern reading, taking into account such a challenge as a changing social reality. The rapid informatization of society led to the digitization of the social system and the datification of the living space, which, in turn, affected interpersonal interactions and communications which are important for the socialization process. The emerging collapse of social space in its traditional form in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly worsened the present situation. The latter circumstance affected the personal and group identities of the representatives of society. In this regard, the author focuses on the peculiarities of the process of identity formation of young people who are at the stage of primary socialization; specifies the elements of the mechanism of identity formation; offers a conceptual apparatus that allows detailed conceptualization of the observed changes. The author’s theoretical and methodological research is based on a synergetic interdisciplinary paradigm, a phenomenological approach, the theory of generations, publications of Russian sociologists engaged in the study of youth problems through the prism of the concept of uncertainty, nonlinearity and risk in the youth environment (primarily, the works of V. I. Chuprov, Yu. A. Zubok). The article continues the author’s cycle of the publications devoted to the reflection of the categories “liminality”, “liminal identity”, “social singularity”.

Identity of Siberian youth under Russian society modernization

The problems raised in the article by A. V. Ivanov and Yu. V. Popkov “Spiritual and ecological civilizational perspective: the value potential of youth in the Siberian context”, published in the journal “Siberian society” no. 1 (2021), are very relevant in conditions of serious internal and external “challenges”: coronavirus, sanctions of a number of countries against Russia, “brain drain”, especially among young people, the need for radical modernization of society in the context of globalization etc. Siberia is undoubtedly one of the centers of the Eurasian civilization. Siberia is a region not only with the richest natural resources, but, no less important, human resources. The main “human capital” is youth. The author of the article rightly notes the leading role of youth in modern socio-political and economic transformations. At the same time, “human capital”, and above all the youth potential of Siberia, is being used ineffectively. Moreover, young people, not seeing opportunities for self-realization in the Siberian region, find such opportunities outside its borders (in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other countries). The “brain drain” of young people is an acute problem not only in Siberia, but throughout Russia. This article is about the topic of the spiritual and ethical component of modern civilizational processes, in which the social identity formation of young people takes a significant place. At the same time, some critical remarks were made about the article by A. V. Ivanov and Yu. V. Popkov. In particular, the expediency of referring to the experience of the past, to those values and morals that existed more than a hundred years ago, is questioned. Certain conclusions controversy of the article under discussion is noted. Although, according to the author, it is precisely in their ambiguity that its heuristic potential lies, since they encourage discussion and the formation of new approaches. The article highlights and analyzes three main paradigms of modernization. On the basis of N. Luhmann’s approach, the structure of the civilizational order as an autopoietic system is formulated. The necessity of preserving the unique socio-cultural landscapes of Siberia is substantiated.

Whiteness, Artist Identities, and Artworld Spaces

This paper considers a research study into the artist identity formation in young people engaged in a teen arts internship program at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans using the construct of whiteness to examine access to artist identities and artworld spaces. Art has always been embedded into the cultural and spiritual practices of people’s everyday lives. Yet, modern and contemporary artworld identities and spaces have been shaped by exclusionary and oppressive practices. In the city of New Orleans, there is a persistent presence of African American art and cultural practices that thrive outside of artworld institutions. And yet, as this study demonstrates, artworld identities and spaces within the city of New Orleans and beyond, even when they espouse social justice orientations, often remain within the milieu of whiteness and related power structures.

It's how I am . . . it's what I am . . . it's a part of who I am: A narrative exploration of the impact of adolescent-onset chronic illness on identity formation in young people.

In Western society, identity formation is argued to be one of the key developmental tasks of adolescence. Despite implications for adolescent development, research into chronic illness (CI) onset during this period has been notably sparse. This study aimed to explore how diagnosis impacts on the developmental tasks of adolescence, what role adolescent-onset CI plays in identity formation, and how adolescents incorporate the diagnosis into their identity using a narrative analysis. Individual semi-structured interviews were carried out with eight young people aged 14 to 19years who lived with a diagnosis of a CI diagnosed between the ages of 12 and 16 years. Five core narrative themes emerged: walking a different path, tolerating contradiction, a changed interface with others, locating power and a fluid relationship. Narratives were considered to have been influenced by factors such as the interview context and dominant social narratives concerning health and illness. Adolescent-onset CI was found to have a significant, though not exclusively negative, impact on developmental tasks. The findings are discussed in relation to existing literature and potential clinical implications.

Identidad étnica, discriminacion percibida y procesos afectivos en jóvenes mapuches urbanos

Este artículo presenta una reflexión crítica a partir de la identidad en la disciplina científica de la psicología. Expone la importancia de considerar y enfatizar los aspectos afectivos de la identidad, tanto como los cognitivos. Plantea, además, que la construcción de la identidad sería un proceso diná- mico, ya que se encuentra en permanente movimiento y transformación a lo largo de todo el desarrollo humano. El proceso de conformación de la identidad es, además, afectado por su entorno cultural local y también por la globalización, sobre todo cuando existen tensiones identitarias, como es el caso de los jóvenes que se adscriben a algún pueblo originario. En esta dualidad, la identidad étnica de los jóvenes mapuches se negocia constantemente entre la tensión de mantener su cultura y formar parte de la cultura del grupo dominante, que comúnmente desvaloriza la identidad de los grupos minoritarios, a través de la instalación de prejuicios y prácticas discriminatorias, que tendrán consecuencias en la vida de los jóvenes discriminados. Este documento es un artículo teórico y tiene como objetivo principal aportar a la comprensión de la conformación identitaria en jóvenes que se identifican a sí mismos como personas mapuches, en el contexto actual, marcado por un clima de violencia y discriminación, en el Chile urbano de hoy.

Youth ministry as an agency of youth development for the vulnerable youth of the Cape Flats

Religiosity has a profound role and influence on youth development within a community. Religiosity promotes risk reduction and positive moral characteristics and thus remains an avenue of opportunity for transformation in considering the lived experiences of vulnerable young people living on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape, South Africa. The Cape Flats is an area that is overwhelmed with unemployment, poverty, gang violence, chemical substance abuse and a general societal abandonment of young people. It is out of dire hopelessness that a meaningful relationship with God can be experienced by youth. The Cape Flats is, therefore, a fertile space for an intervention of religiosity. This article will research how the agency of youth ministry as a positive youth development can assist in youth development within a community in tension like that of the Cape Flats. While youth development is a broad category for consideration and research, this article will primarily focus on identity formation of young people, in particular, the vulnerable youth living on the Cape Flats.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The agency of youth ministry, in an evangelical epistemology, should seek to address the influencers on adolescent identity formation, as one’s identity has a direct bearing on faith formation. The potential outcome of the article would allow the youth ministry to take serious the impact of the lived realities of youth and adjust their programmatic designs and outcomes, in relation to youth faith formation.

Constituting neoliberal subjects? ‘Aspiration’ as technology of government in UK policy discourse

Since the 2000s, successive governments in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have embraced the idea of ‘raising aspiration’ among young people as a solution to persisting educational and socio-economic inequalities. Previous analyses have argued that these policies tend to individualise structural disadvantage and promote a ‘deficit’ view of working-class youth. This paper adopts a novel approach to analysing aspiration discourses combining Michel Foucault’s four dimensions of ‘ethics’ and Mitchell Dean’s notion of ‘formation of identities’. Applying Foucault’s and Dean’s work in this way provides a new lens that enables an examination of how policy encourages particular forms of subjectivation, and, therefore, seeks to govern individuals. The findings presented in the paper complicate previous research by showing that raising aspiration strategies portray disadvantaged youth both in terms of ‘deficit’ and ‘potential’, resulting in a requirement for inner transformation and mobility through attitudinal change. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the identity formation of young people and for conceptualising contemporary forms of governmentality.

New Instrument of Adolescents’ Peer Interaction Research

For decades, it has been well based on the fundamental theories, we know that peer inter-action it is a key factor for identity formation in young people. However, does this mean that the content of adolescent interactions has stayed the same for the past half a century ago and today are the same? Studies of adolescent peer interaction often struggle to access the subjects’ own meaning-making. Without such informational background, developmental theory lacks the nu-anced understanding of the subjective component of adolescent experiences across various cul-tural and socio-economic contexts. Teenagers sometimes struggle articulating what is important and unimportant within peer interactions, and what are the rules of the interactions are. Any method based on self-reporting to an adult researcher involves potential bias related to the social expectations of the surveyor or interviewer. The purpose of the research presented here is to de-velop a new instrument, a projective method of indirect access to adolescent perceptions of peer culture on terms identified by adolescents themselves. In this study, a group of 14 teenagers aged 13 to 16 were presented a 1960-s film on adolescence. They were asked to select any scenes from the film and remake them in the contemporary context. The resulting script and videos show that the content of adolescent interactions revolves around the relational boundaries, with sex, violence, and interaction with adults serving as background. Conclusions from the the study reflect sensitivity of the fundamental theories describing maturation, but at the same time the ar-ticle describes the changes in the material through which adolescents development occurs.

Integrating an Existential Perspective in Youth Care: A Care Ethical Argument

The biographies of youngsters placed in youth care are burdened with deeply impacting and often traumatizing experiences of abuse, neglect and violence. These experiences raise existential questions that play a pivotal role in the development of these youngsters. In this paper, our purpose is to make clear that good, effective youth care integrates paying attention to these existential aspects. First, we elaborate on the debate on the effectiveness of youth care. Our goal here is to draw attention to the importance and relevance of this dimension of youth care, and embed it in a care ethical point of view. Second, we give a more elaborate account of this existential dimension of youth care, from both the perspectives of the care receiver and the caregiver. We discuss the relation to identity formation of young people, to various forms of sense making and to the symbolic character of the existential dimension of care which is visible in play. Third, we point out several aspects of professional competence that seem crucial to integrate the existential dimension in youth care practice.

Becoming ‘I’

This article draws upon the orientation ‘blog’ posts from a current PhD study focusing on identity formation in young people undertaking their final year of secondary schooling within the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). It critically investigates how participants define the ‘purpose’ of their engagement with the study and the subjectivities they employ in those interactions. The online blogs designed for this study are intended to create a space in which participants are able to act a-synchronously and discuss their ‘day-to-day’ experiences of the VCE. A key focus of this paper is to explicate the nature of this activity as performative, that is, participants contributing to blogs actively consider the nature of their engagement and construct an implicit ‘Other’ — a relationship that is informed by the purpose for participating in the research. Utilising Deleuze’s concept of ‘becoming’ (1987) along with a narrative methods framework (Riessman, 2008), it investigates the concept of ‘Other’ and will trace the process of ‘becoming storyteller’ as an active performance in Blog participation.

Religious education in the experience of young people from mixed‐faith families

On the basis of a recent ethnographic study at the University of Warwick of the religious identity formation of young people in ‘mixed‐faith’ families, this article focuses on their (and their parents’) experiences and perceptions of religious education (RE) and of religious nurture in the community. The young people’s experience of RE differed between primary and secondary school and only a few were engaged in supplementary classes. We highlight the complementarity between school and home in young people’s religious learning and draw out implications for RE.

Issues Arising from an Ethnographic Investigation of the Religious Identity Formation of Young People in Mixed-faith Families

This article documents and discusses issues arising from an ethnographic study of the religious identity formation of young people growing up in mixed-faith families. It reports and reflects on challenges to the design of our project, possible explanations for these challenges and the ways in which we addressed them. The areas where we encountered difficulties relate, firstly, to the combination of traditional ethnography with cyber-ethnography and, secondly, to sampling, interviewing and participant observation. There are implications for our project and for future empirical studies of families, especially those with particular focus on religion, culture and identity. The intention of this article is thus twofold: to make a contribution to debates regarding methodsand ethical aspects of ethnography and, through the reflections on our research experiences, to inform researchers who may face similar challenges.

Young People's Identity Formation in Mixed-Faith Families: Continuity or Discontinuity of Religious Traditions?

The present paper draws on a recent ethnographic study which investigated the religious identity formation of young people growing up in mixed-faith families in the UK. Taking into account the parents’ backgrounds in terms of faith tradition, ethnicity, and culture, we explore to what extent and in what way religious values are transmitted from generation to generation. The paper examines the meaning of transmission and places it in the context of earlier research, before looking at processes which facilitate religious transmission and the question of what is transmitted. It then considers the link between culture, religion, ethnicity, and language and how individuals approach these elements. This is followed by a discussion of the role which memory plays in culture and religion, with particular reference to Danièle Hervieu-Léger's concept of religion as a chain of memory and the way it applies to data emerging from our study. Although we focus on two families who participated in our study, we refer to data relating to other families in our project and highlight the importance of grandparents and the extended family in the continuity or rupture in the chains of transmission.

Research Report: Studying the Religious Socialization of Sikh and 'Mixed-Faith' Youth in Britain: Contexts and Issues

AbstractAgainst a backdrop of phases of Sikh settlement in the UK, this article provides an overview of scholarship on UK Sikh communities. Attention turns to four ethnographic studies conducted by the author, two of which focused on unambiguously Sikh communities, and two of which challenge presuppositions of the boundedness of faith communities. Of these one was a study of two historically stigmatised caste-specific Punjabi communities; the other is currently examining the religious identity formation of young people in families in which only one parent is Sikh. Pointers and questions are identified that arise from these UK studies for researchers in mainland Europe. These include methodological considerations and encouragement to contribute to debates in the sociology of religion and to take account of Sikhs' increasing appearance in creative literature.

Multiculture, Identity, Educational Need and Possibilities of (Intercultural) Intervention

In contemporary society it is rare to encounter cooperative efforts to learn, whether we are talking about the family or the school environment. Often we try to resolve conflicts by means of power or strength. Religion, language, skin colour or a different cultural background are seen as insurmountable barriers. Also the practical approaches relating to intercultural education seem to be only known and scarcely practised. In this paper the author starts from the results of an longitudinal, empirical study. He has observed and analysed the process of identity formation in young people with a multicultural socialisation during many years. After having pointed out the factors and mechanisms which are either functional or dysfunctional, the author presents a theory of basic human needs which are especially valid in a multicultural context, building on the contributions of other authors such as Erikson, Maslow and Rogers. The object of this paper is to reflect on the educational consequences of the above‐mentioned factors, as well as explore the way to satisfy our basic educational needs.